Scriptures for Victory #23

 Isaiah 40 is a powerful chapter on what God can do.  After 39 chapters of gloom and doom, it opens with a call for God's people to be comforted - that there is hope. Why? Two Reasons: first, God keeps His Word - it stands forever. That is connected to the second reason: Who we're dealing with here - "Behold your God", we are told! He is the Great One. By the time we get to the end of the chapter we are overwhelmed with a great and well-known promise of renewed strength by Almighty God. Today we will let God speak for Himself as we read beginning in verse:

21 Do you not know? Do you not hear?

    Has it not been told you from the beginning?

    Have you not understood from the foundations of the earth?

22 It is he who sits above the circle of the earth,

    and its inhabitants are like grasshoppers;

who stretches out the heavens like a curtain,

    and spreads them like a tent to dwell in;

23 who brings princes to nothing,

    and makes the rulers of the earth as emptiness.

24 Scarcely are they planted, scarcely sown,

    scarcely has their stem taken root in the earth,

when he blows on them, and they wither,

    and the tempest carries them off like stubble.

25 To whom then will you compare me,

    that I should be like him? says the Holy One.

26 Lift up your eyes on high and see:

    who created these?

He who brings out their host by number,

    calling them all by name;

by the greatness of his might

    and because he is strong in power,

    not one is missing.

27 Why do you say, O Jacob,

    and speak, O Israel,

“My way is hidden from the Lord,

    and my right is disregarded by my God”?

28 Have you not known? Have you not heard?

The Lord is the everlasting God,

    the Creator of the ends of the earth.

He does not faint or grow weary;

    his understanding is unsearchable.

29 He gives power to the faint,

    and to him who has no might he increases strength.

30 Even youths shall faint and be weary,

    and young men shall fall exhausted;

31 but they who wait for the Lord shall renew their strength;

    they shall mount up with wings like eagles;

they shall run and not be weary;

    they shall walk and not faint.